The Lobster ★★★★☆

Calling Yorgos Lanthimos'  The Lobster a weird film doesn't cut it. Even being told the premise of this arthouse-drama-rom-com-sci-fi (and breathe) isn't enough to prepare you for the quicksand pit of dry-as-a-bone humour and series of emotionally-stunted trysts you'll find yourself experiencing, never mind the surprisingly intense moments of physical danger.

In a mildly-hinted-at dystopian near future, David (Colin Farrell) has become a single man and, naturally, finds himself in a hotel with his dog of a brother, given just 45 days to find new love or else turn into an animal of his choosing. His choice is a lobster, exemplifying a running theme of animal imagery throughout the film that treads the line between subtly hilarious and heartbreakingly sad. Lanthimos will have you giggling at David's brother's uninspired decision to be a dog one moment and then have you emotionally reach out for a pony who has to say goodbye to her scorned human best friend. 

This thematic line permeates the whole film and is presented to us from the offset - the opening scene is a stationary shot of a woman leaving her car to shoot a cow in a field. You don't know whether to laugh or feel mortified and The Lobster rarely lets you experience one without the other. Even as the dramas of the film reach their crescendo, there is a joke about a blind person, a stray camel walking past in the background or some other insensitive humour.

These moments offer little by way of comic relief and indeed there's little relief in The Lobster at all. No person is truly comfortable in this world and often it seems that is all anyone is aiming for  - a respite from the madness, a calm from the roar of loneliness, a break from running full pelt through the woods with a dart gun. 

This uneasiness all plays under the surface for Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz. Their acting prowess and comedic timing is demonstrated not in what they say, but in what they don't. They tackle the offbeat script with deftness and subtlety, with Farrell echoing the pining stares and quiet discomfort he displayed in In Bruges (2008). Weisz brings surprising humour to what could be a flat character, proving that she has a part in the awkward, dry comedy that is so popular in indie cinema. The film is littered with a host of other stars, who all fit their characters to a tee - Olivia Coleman plays the overbearing hostess, Léa Seydoux portrays the Katniss Everdeen-esque outlaw and Ben Whishaw is the limping man who lies his way into a relationship. That's not to say any one of these stars (as well as John C. Reilly as Lisping Man and Michael Smiley as Loner Swimmer) aren't challenged. They have also had to adapt to a script of stunted speech and peculiar timing as well as endure cringe-inducing acts of physical abuse.

That harm that comes to several characters is an important one to note. The scenes are not shocking because of how explicit they are, but because they transform the film from a quirky, slightly dark comedy into a gripping, hard sci-fi that serves up plenty of allegory and forms much more interesting characters. In a story where it feels as if nobody is where they want to be, these moments of violence make their desperation much more painful, taking David and his cohorts to a bleak place. The Lobster leaves it's characters and audience in a more depressing state than which it began, yet somehow you walk out of the cinema more humoured and bewildered than pessimistic. You may depart Farrel and Weisz to their surreal, grey world, but you'll take with you all the joy that which they were bereft.


*side note - This is the second film Whishaw has been in recently where he's thrown the central character out of his residence, the other being Suffragette. I haven't yet seen Spectre, but I'm now expecting a front-porch stand-off between Q and Bond.